Nigerian early-stage fund Microtraction has invested in two more fintech startups – Wallet.ng and Allpro – to grow its portfolio to four companies.
Launched in July of last year, early-stage investment platform Microtraction invests up to US$65,000 in startups at the very earliest stage of their development.
The fund recently announced its first two investments, having funded in Nigerian fintech startups CowryWise and Bitkoin Africa towards the end of last year, and it has now added two more to its portfolio in the form of Wallet.ng and Allpro. The amount of each investment has not been disclosed, with the deals completed earlier this year.
Wallet.ng is a smart banking alternative that makes transactions fast, convenient, reliable and accessible for businesses and consumers. It also built a customer-centric mobile wallet, paired with a prepaid debit card, that solves many problems customers have in managing their finances on a day-to-day basis whilst keeping transactions fees low.
“We believe that Wallet can become truly pan-African. They are building a central hub where people spend their money and have access to other financial services which have been built on top of their infrastructure,” said Microtraction founder and managing partner Yele Bademosi.
“Fintech companies have been unbundling services and products traditionally offered by banks. What Wallet is doing is re-bundling those services and products into a unified customer experience that the user will love. To do that, it requires a nimble and flexible technology with an open API infrastructure which Wallet have built.”
Microtraction has also invested in Allpro, which has built an end-to-end lending platform for schools in Nigeria. The startup underwrites risk and provides capital to schools using data gathered from its fee payment and school management software.
“What we cared about when we invested in Allpro was the product strategy and if the founders could execute on the product vision. We get excited about an opportunity when there’s an overlap between the founders’ product vision, their ability to execute on that vision and our investment thesis,” said Bademosi.
“We believe that education is one of the best investments we can make today to address some of the biggest challenges of tomorrow.”
You can read Disrupt Africa’s full interview with Bademosi as part of our Meet the Investor series here.
